


Just the Way You Are

by teamchaosprez



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: DR3 Sucked, F/M, Human Nanami Chiaki, Near Death, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16079123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamchaosprez/pseuds/teamchaosprez
Summary: Izuru can't let Chiaki die. He won't.So he doesn't.





	Just the Way You Are

**Author's Note:**

> note: hinanami is a past thing  
> another note: sorry if chiaki is a BIT ooc i write her in an rp server where she has gone through Character Development (which the series does not give her fuck you kodaka) and i tend to default to it

Chiaki was struggling to keep herself conscious, struggling to keep her chest rising and falling despite the pain, the weakness sourcing from the million wounds along her body, the gaping holes where spikes had just left her. She struggled to open her eyes when she heard footsteps approaching, prayed that this would be someone on their way to give her a bit of mercy, to put her out of her misery so that she could finally  _ rest _ and be done with struggling to keep herself alive. She didn’t even fully want to keep herself alive, but she wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to do. She didn’t know how to give up, even though she spent so much of her life just  _ sleeping _ she couldn’t figure out how to do it now --

Pink eyes fluttered opening, and she was barely aware of the blood leaking into her eyes. Her breathing was more shaky and rattling than it had been mere moments before. She didn’t have much time left, she was clearly aware of that. It was with blurred vision that she stared up at the dark figure standing before him, the young man with long dark hair framing his face and red eyes looking down at her with a sort of coldness she had never experienced from the features before her.

“Hajime?” she asked, her voice soft and hoarse as she squinted. He looked different, he was different, but that was his face, his shape. She forced herself to turn over, to pull herself onto her elbows and look up at the boy before her. Her breathing became even more labored, and she got the sense that she had just used up a good amount of the small level of strength she had left. She wasn’t even sure about the words that left her mouth while she was speaking, but either way, she was wearing down fast, and could only let out a quiet and strangled, “I just wish I could play video games with you… one more time…”

She tried to reach out to him, but her arm went limp and her breathing hitched. She was going to die, she was about to lose consciousness, at least she got to say goodbye…

The gamer cried out softly when she felt strong arms underneath her knees and on her back, pressing on the wounds that had been left there. A strangled sob was the only sound she was capable of as the boy held her a little closer to his chest. “Hush, it’s okay,” he spoke to her, his voice calm and cold but still somewhat soothing for its familiarity. She supposed he was trying, and that was enough for her. “You’re going to be just fine, Nanami. Just try to stay awake a little longer,” he told her as he carried her out of the room, held her tight against him. A curtain of long dark hair fell over her, and Chiaki couldn’t help but giggle softly out of delirious amusement at the way everything was going thus far.

He carried her for a while, and she struggled to keep awake and alive as he brought her through the bright, painfully bright, medically bright and white and familiar. She didn’t have it in her to be angry at how Miss Yukizome betrayed her, about how she was used to hurt her friends, she could only assume. Why else would anybody hurt her this badly? She let out a gentle squeak of pain when the young man pulled her to the side and into a dark, cramped space, and he pressed his hand against her mouth.

“That was  _ amazing, _ Muku!” she heard a familiar voice chirp, and she was sure that it belonged to the Ultimate Fashionista in the class below her. “Did you see the despair on their faces? Did you see the pain? Our plan is doing wonderfully! We can have the Tragedy occur as soon as we get Kamukura to do what he promised and despair will take over the whole world!” A squealing giggle left the girl outside, and Chiaki’s pained eyes blinked open to look through the boy’s hair and out into the hallway. She just barely caught a glimpse of the blonde grabbing her twin sister by the wrist and dragging her away.

The boy scoffed, and stepped back into the hall as soon as Junko Enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba vanished. As they continued on their way in calm silence, Chiaki felt her eyelids grow heavy, and she struggled to continue breathing. Her eyes closed, her head lolled against the boy’s chest. He glanced down at her, and spoke up again. “My name is Izuru Kamukura,” he told her, so matter of factly. “I am in the same body Hajime Hinata once inhabited, but he and I are not the same.”

“Wha’ happened?” she slurred out, having a hard time expressing herself.

“That’s a story for when you get better,” Izuru Kamukura responded, giving her the closest thing to a smile she had seen from him yet. She supposed he was trying to keep her awake by talking, and she appreciated the effort, at the very least. Her breathing was a little more stable than it had been before, and she felt herself calming a little more with every moment that passed. “I’m going to take you somewhere you’ll be hidden, because Enoshima won’t take it well if she founds out that you’re still alive and the execution she tried so hard to set up failed.”

* * *

 

Chiaki was stuck in a bed in a long abandoned building for weeks while she recovered, but the gaming system and television that Izuru brought for her from her room back at Hope’s Peak helped the time pass by more quickly than it otherwise would have. Even spending hours wasting away and playing Zelda and Mario and various Sonic titles got old after a while, though, and she found herself trying and failing to make conversation with Izuru. He was a man of few words, but she came to consider him a friend nonetheless; a friend who she taught how to play her favorite fighting games, and who might have even been better at them than she was. (Though several times she just let him win.)

It wasn’t until the power went out almost a month into her recovery that Chiaki ceaselessly tried to get Izuru to talk to her, to make conversation. He only responded with one word sentences or with quiet grunts at first, but as he seemed to get a little more comfortable with her and stopped just asking her why she wasn’t taking her second nap of the day, his answers finally started getting longer and his demeanor appeared to reach a calmer, more relaxed state.

She wasn’t fully expecting for him to open up to her about his backstory after one night of listening to everything he had to say and validating him, but that was what happened nonetheless. “Hajime Hinata gave himself up to the illegal human experimentation going on in the basement of Hope’s Peak,” Izuru told her, calmly, as if he wasn’t describing one of the most horrifying stories she had ever heard in her life. “They erased his personality, implanted as many talents as they could get into him, and the result was… me. Izuru Kamukura, named for the founder of the school and the project.”

Chiaki blinked, and before she could stop herself she had pulled up into a sitting position and wrapped her arms around her friend. Her head rested easily against his shoulders, and she let out a shaky sigh. “Well, I think that where you came from doesn’t matter. It’s what you do with the gift of life that makes you who you are.” Was she loosely quoting Mewtwo? Maybe. But she didn’t want to admit it.

Izuru’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as if he was a fish, but at the end of it he chose to just stay quiet. He did lean against her in turn, though, and Chiaki’s heart swelled; she was making a breakthrough here, the first time she managed to break through her quiet friend’s walls in the time since she came to live with him hidden from Junko Enoshima’s gaze. “Thank you, Chiaki,” he said, voice softer than she had ever heard it. The two of them stayed like that, even after the power flickered back on and the startup screen of the gaming system appeared on the television.

For the first time in her life, Chiaki didn’t really want to play video games - she just wanted to sit idly with her friend, stay with him until he decided that he was tired of her. Much to her surprise and delight, he didn’t push her off, didn’t ask her to go away; he seemed to be just as happy to be with her, or as happy as he could possibly be. They remained together until she fell asleep against his side, her breathing slowing and her hair falling into her face as unconsciousness took her.

* * *

 

She grieved for Hajime, of course she did, but she tried to do it where Izuru couldn’t see her. She was unsure of whether or not she would ever be able to have romantic feelings for anyone again. Maybe she was just being dramatic in thinking that, though, and even though it took a while, the pain in her chest slowly began to fade with every passing day until a few months after she was rescued from the execution chambers and Chiaki could finally breathe a little easier.

She wasn’t sure, at first, whether the warmth in her chest when she spent time with Izuru was because he unfortunately inhabited the body her boyfriend once had or if it was because she was starting to develop genuine feelings for him. The more time went by, the more she got to know him, the more she was sure it was the latter, but she was more than a little nervous to bring it up to him. So she went about her days as she usually did - confined to the couch, occasionally walking laps around the room to make sure the muscles in her legs didn’t wither up while she was on bed rest. 

“Chiaki?”

She was a little surprised when she heard her friend’s voice, and straightened up from where she stood hunched over the stove making some dinner. She wasn’t supposed to be up for long periods of time, but she was doing better and better every day, and she felt like doing something, anything to keep herself busy. “What’s up?” she asked, giving Izuru a bright smile as he dropped down from the floor above them; she didn’t know much about the other sections of the building, but she was aware that the other members of her class lived on the level above her and Izuru, and she wondered how risky her situation was. It was a good thing, she supposed, that she didn’t make an awful lot of noise.

“I have a question for you,” he stated, and didn’t even give her a moment to prepare herself before he asked it. “Do you like me for me? Izuru Kamukura? Or do you pretend to like me out of obligation or hope that Hajime Hinata will come back?” His words were so calmly stated that she barely had enough time to be insulted that he lacked faith in her.

“I like you for you, Izuru.” The answer came from her easily, calmly, and she gave him a soft and gentle smile. “I mean, I’m… sad that Hajime is gone, for sure, but I don’t blame you for it, and I think you’re a unique and wonderful person all by yourself. I… like you. Quite a bit.”

Izuru stared at her for a few long moments, before a light dusting of pink appeared across his cheeks. “Thank you,” he said curtly, and walked to the opposite end of the room.

She shook her head, a small, fond smile on her face as she returned to cooking.

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if you enjoyed!


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